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Buffalo Plane Crash; Pushing Toward Final Passage

Aired February 13, 2009 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TONY HARRIS, CNN NEWS ANCHOR: hello again, everyone. I'm Tony Harris. Here are the headlines for this Friday, February 13th.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID LUCE, CRASH WITNESS: The house shook, the window shook, the ground shook itself. It was a real blast.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: A Buffalo area home incinerated when a plane crashes. The flight data recorders from Continental 3407 pulled from the wreckage.

We expect a briefing from the federal crash investigators to begin momentarily. Here's what we know right now about the crash of Continental flight 3407. The plane's flight data recorders will be arriving in Washington shortly, if they haven't already arrived for analysis.

CNN iReporters saw the turbo prop dive into a house near Buffalo exploding in a massive fireball. These pictures from iReporter Will Charland just in.

From Google you can see the house, the neighborhood before the crash. One person inside was killed, the two others survived.

The Continental plane was a turbo prop on approach to Buffalo's airport from Newark. Witnesses say the plane's engine seemed unusually loud, then suddenly quit. Seconds later, the deadly impact.

CNN's Deb Feyerick is at a crash command center just outside of Buffalo.

Deb, I'm assuming this is the location where the NTSB briefing will begin shortly.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Correct. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, the black boxes have been recovered. The voice recorder and the flight data recorder both have been retrieved. They are enroute to Washington, D.C., according to NTSB officials.

Witnesses who saw the plane say that it was completely obliterated. For investigators, what that means is a small area for them to search out evidence and seek out pieces. The one large piece was the tail and that's where they found the black boxes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVEN CHEALANDER, NTSB: It is a confined area. One house was consumed by the fire and the explosion and the impact of the airplane. It doesn't give us a larger area to work for, so I guess in that way it could be possibly in our favor. But we don't have to look for miles looking for wreckage because it is in that confined area.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FEYERICK: Two of the witnesses who saw this whole thing play out, Jaimee Lynn Trujillo, and her daughter, Asita.

First of all, your house looks down on to the house that caught fire. Tell me what you saw when the plane crashed.

JAIMEE LYNN TRUJILLO, CRASH WITNESS: Well, we didn't know what was going on until hour neighbors told us because we heard everything from the moment we were in the house. Our house shook and at that point we ran outside because we heard this low buzzing sound. And when we ran to the scene -- well, we saw from our kitchen window we saw all these flames, everything just engulfed in flames and they were getting higher. We just ran outside. Some of the neighbors were outside at that point. Every one was trying to call 911. We were trying to see if we could pull anybody out but we couldn't even get close to the flame. It just keeps going higher and higher.

We did see the wing of the plane standing straight up. The whole part of the plane was such a crazy angle, you could see some parts to it, then it would engulf in flames. At that point I heard a woman screaming. I turned behind because I heard a woman screaming "That's my house! That's my house. "And I turned around and she was barefoot and this couple was holding her up because she fell to the ground. At that point I was going to ask if she needed anything. But I turned around because there was another explosion within the fire. And so I turn around and the fire crept growing bigger and bigger. The house was already demolished. There was no house there.

FEYERICK: The flames that you saw, the people, was there anybody that anybody could get out of that plane from what you saw?

TRUJILLO: Unfortunately, no. And that's where all we could do was just stand there and pray and text people to just start praying and praying. We just sat there and waited and waited and watched and nobody came.

FEYERICK: The images that you saw and the things that you heard last night, how do you describe that to somebody who's never witnessed what you saw?

ASITA (ph) TRUJILLO, CRASH WITNESS: Well, it was sort of like a -- when you're inside of a plane how it gets -- it starts, then it sort of dies down, then it starts again. But what was wrong here is that it sounded like something was like starting to grow, like starting to get stuck in there and it just started hitting against it. And it just got stuck in there and it tried to push against it to get it to move, but it couldn't. Finally the engine gave up and just fell right down and crashed.

FEYERICK: When you think about how close it came to your own house, what do you think?

TRUJILLO: Well, this is a bittersweet -- it's a bittersweet moment, because I thank God that -- because it flew right directly over us and if it would have been maybe a minute sooner or a second sooner it would have been us. So I'm just grateful that our lives were spared. But at the same time, I mourn and I grieve with all those people who have lost their lives and for that woman whose house -- her and her daughter, I understand from watching the news myself this morning, are out but her husband didn't make it out. So it's bittersweet.

FEYERICK: OK, thank you so much for joining us.

FEYERICK: Again, a lot of trauma in this community right now. People simply trying to figure out how a plane could simply fall from the sky -- Tony.

HARRIS: Deb Feyerick, that's pretty powerful and emotional stuff. Thank you.

Will Charland is on the phone with us.

Will, first of all, thank you for being with us.

Will is one of our iReporters.

Will, you did an amazing job at sort of capturing the most devastating images of the impact -- well, not the impact, but certainly the fire, the fiery aftermath of the crash yesterday. If you would, talk us through last night for you and coming upon this scene.

WILL CHARLAND, CNN IREPORTER: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Tony. First, my heart goes out to all the victims and their families. Not going to be forgetting about you guys for a while.

As far as what took place, I was actually outside my home walking across the street to visit a neighbor. All of a sudden I look up and I hear a plane about 150 feet above my head. Sounded like a lawn mower was falling from the sky. Next thing, I hear a loud crash and the sky lit up like the sun was rising. From there, just ran over to the scene. I live three blocks away, maybe a quarter-mile away. Just had my video camera. Got some footage.

HARRIS: Boy. We're going to cue this up. I want to ask you a couple other questions but describe what it was like walking upon the scene and camera rolling.

CAHRLAND: Well, you could pretty much see it with my coverage. Walking up, people screaming, not sure if someone's inside. It was intense. An image that I wish I didn't see, honestly. HARRIS: Will, at that moment -- let's do this. You teed it up perfectly. Let's watch and listen, and particularly listen to what you were able to capture last night.

Let's listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get some help for my daughter.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my god.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get some help for my daughter! She's hysterical!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my gosh! Is there anybody in there?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My daughter. My husband.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Police!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A fire, the house. No, it hit already, and I talked to her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Will, I'm just sort of curious as I'm watching it, my honest reaction is I feel like those little hairs on my arms are standing on end here. I have to ask you -- I know there is an adrenalin rush when you're doing this, but was there a moment when you really sort of -- it really hit you what you had captured?

CHARLAND: You know, Tony, I really don't think so yet. Like you said, adrenalin, that's a key word for me right now. I was up until 4:00 a.m., maybe got two hours of sleep. and that's exactly what's powering me right now. It's just shocking and -- exactly. I mean I walked up on that scene and literally just got the chills.

HARRIS: Boy, Will, hang in there for just a moment with us. We want to bring in John Wiley here.

John, if you would, as you look at these pictures, so dramatic -- and the one question that I've had throughout the morning, it's something that I brought up in our meeting, and I want to bring it up to you, which will probably provide a different way for us to get at what happened here is, planes fly in these kinds of conditions, as they've been described, all the time. Help us understand how a plane is flying through these conditions and all of a sudden just loses everything and just drops like a brick. What again does that tell you about what happened here? JOHN WILEY, FORMER AIRBUS PILOT: Well, that's going to be the real conundrum. We're going to take six to nine months of a whole lot of experts, propulsion experts, airplane experts, pilots, people that are familiar with all the systems on the airplane, sifting through this, coming in with, first off, a very big light. Then they will continue to move that light down that plane.

HARRIS: That's what's scary about this.

WILEY: No, not really.

HARRIS: Well, we fly -- we fly in these conditions. There are people in this country right now probably flying in these conditions and then when they hear some of the descriptions of this plane just sort of dropping out of the sky, it's scary.

WILEY: I will concede that fact. But you have to remember, too -- and this is a little bit parochial. I'm not trying to denigrate any of the country. but here in north America we are extremely privileged at the airports that we have, the facilities that we have, the maintenance that we have, the aircraft that we have. So this will be the exception, again, to the rule. All accidents are unique. We'll look at ice. We'll look at the airplane. We'll look at the air crew. We'll look at the entire facility. But do I have any qualms -- I started flying a whole long time ago, and I will probably, in the next couple of days, be back in the cockpit again.

HARRIS: I'm sort of curious. I was asking Rob just a couple of moments ago as he was describing this de-icing system and the boot that expand to knock the ice off of the leading edge of the wings. and I'm curious as to whether or not that is a system that triggers automatically or is that a system that has to be triggered, flipped on, another way of putting it, by the pilot?

WILEY: Some systems are automated. Some are manual. Some will basically, you go into these conditions -- again we were talking about plus 10 Celsius, 50 degrees Fahrenheit we use a lot of the metric system inside the cockpit. When you anticipate you're going into these conditions, you'll tune up a frequency prior to going into the airport. They'll tell you the winds, the temperatures, and what the prevailing weather is. They'll also issue special observations if that weather changes.

So this crew from Continental 3407 knew the conditions they would have been flying into. They would have also been listening to the other pilots on frequency. They would have been using these systems. De-ice after the fact, anti-ice prior to the fact.

HARRIS: Our severe weather expert, Chad Myers, has a question for you.

WILEY: Sure.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: This plane was coming out of a higher elevation so the plane was cold, John. Does that affect it as it comes down into this riming area, because the fuselage and all the leading edges may be minus 16 coming down into the minus 3 dew points? Does that help collect like the condensation on the glass in the summertime when you're having an iced tea?

WILEY: It can. In this case we're looking at the accretion of this ice. I have no doubt at all -- we heard Delta talk about that they were creating ice. We heard Cactus, U.S. Air, talking about that they'd been picking up a half to a quarter-inch of ice. We also had an aircraft take off afterwards and they asked for an express climb. They asked for an unrestricted climb to 8,000 feet. They were aware of the ice there.

MYERS: John, these planes do this all the time. There must be thousands of successful landings through the same type of conditions. Right?

WILEY: I've been in icing conditions many times. In fact, I routinely fly between Atlanta and Indianapolis, and we wind up in icing conditions. Just last week, a fair amount of icing and we're having to exercise all these systems.

HARRIS: I'm just sort of curious, how born is the communication from the pilots to air traffic control so that they are aware and have informed the air traffic control system so that the air traffic control system can inform other pilots about the conditions that they're flying into? It seems that's critical.

WILEY: Well, that's one big community. You won't find a group of pilots saying we won't talk to Tony because he flies for this other airline and we're in competition. That doesn't exist in the air. It is one big fraternity.

In the Airman's Information Manual it will tell you that you're supposed to make pilot reps, pilots reports, for various threats, conditions, icing, winds, et cetera. So, yes, there should have been probably somebody talking about this along the way, and we hear that afterwards when Delta mentions and also Cactus mentions the fact that they've been picking up this ice.

HARRIS: John, do me a favor, would you?

WILEY: Yes.

HARRIS: I don't know what your time is like, but will you stand by with us as we await the report from the NTSB?

WILEY: Yes.

HARRIS: That'd be great. Thank you.

Let's get back to Chad Myers.

Chad, you're, again, our Severe Weather Expert. I want your take on this and the conditions this plane was flying into and trying to land it.

MYERS: I went back and looked at the weather balloon data when they launched the balloon a couple hours before this plane went down. There was icing all over western New York. Plus, we also had wind off the lake and those lakes can produce steam. They get frozen up in the winter a lot of time but that's how you get lake-effect snow. You can also get lake effect fog, lake effect freezing fog, lake effect rain, lake effect clouds, all kind of thing go on in this little microclimate around the great lakes that I used to live in.

But the skew team will do a couple things for us, kind after big term for just when the air balloon -- when the weather balloon went up, what temperature did it find, what dew point or what relative humidity did it find? Well, from the bottom layers, the bottom 13,000 feet through all the way down to where this plane lost contact, was an icing event. It was an icing event for rime icing on the lead edges of the wings, on the propeller itself and also for the carburetion unit as it draws the air into the engine making that carburetor -- you know what a jet of a carburetor looks like. If you look down, you got a Holly 650 or maybe a Holly 550 or a Holly 450. And all of a sudden, you're losing jet potential because of the icing if they don't do all the things right.

Do you do all the tings right? This never should have happened. There's a recipe that had to happen. There must have been -- you can't blame it on one thing. Maybe five different things went wrong to make this one particular event happen. Maybe it was three, maybe it was four. It wasn't just one particular thing that went wrong.

The whole night though last night was an icing event for Buffalo.

We talked to Deborah Feyerick. She drove all night long into ugly, ugly weather. That was down at the surface. You get another 1,000 feet up, it was just as bad for those airplanes as well.

HARRIS: I think you've hit on it. We've been having discussions about it obviously all morning long. And it just sounds like this was a situation that came together seemingly at the worst possible moment for flight 3407. I think you just hit on that, Chad. Appreciate it. Thank you.

MYERS: The plane was getting heavy. I checked, the plane can hold 78 people. It wasn't, but it could. It wasn't like it was heavy. Add 1,000 pounds of ice on it, it changes the whole thing.

If the pilot had the auto pilot on for any length of time, he wasn't feeling the difference of what the plane was doing. You take the auto pilot off. We have what the plane was doing on our Google Earth. The last ping we got was 5,000 feet but that's not where the air traffic controllers believe it was at the time. They believe it was at 2,300 feet. That's a misnomer because the ground was only 700 feet. So it was only 1,600 feet above the dirt. So there you go. And that plane was going at 430 feet per second. Do the math, Tony. That's four second.

HARRIS: That's no time.

MYERS: Never even got a mayday. Never got a distress call. Never even got any terror -- you know, any distress in the voice. In any of the old messages, there was never any distress whatsoever and not a mayday.

HARRIS: All right, Chad. Stay with us. I know you will.

MYERS: I will.

HARRIS: We're standing by waiting for the latest briefing from the NTSB to begin. Of course, when it does we will take you there live. We're back in a moment. You're in the CNN "NEWSROOM."

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLAND: As I was getting closer, I saw people pouring out from all sorts of neighborhoods and stuff like that. And there was tons of fire trucks, tons of sirens, more than I've ever heard in my life. Lots of people all over the place. it was pretty chaotic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: CNN iReporter Anthony Trujullo (ph) is a film student who lives in the area. He says he grabbed his camcorder and ran to the scene.

Let me jump out of that and let's get you to just outside of Buffalo, New York, right now. The NTSB hearing is under way.

Chris Collins is the county executive and that's eerie County. Let's listen in.

CHRIS COLLINS, ERIE COUNTY EXECUTIVE: ... in doing so, we did visit with the families, most of the folks you see up here, and they are being treated well. It's a difficult time for them. They have support and it was the right thing for us to show our support at a statewide level, as well as a local level.

So as far as information goes, we'll probably cover that with a lot of questions. So I think the important thing right now is for me to introduce our governor, Governor Paterson, who flew in this morning as soon as he heard of this to truly make sure the families know that the entire state of New York is with them in this difficult moment.

And so with that, and no further adieu, I'd like to turn it over to our governor, David Paterson.

Governor?

DAVID PATERSON, (D), GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK: Thank you, County Executive Collins. And thank you for your work all during the night and this morning.

I'd also like to thank Congressman Chris Lee who is here. Mayor Byron Brown is with us, State Senator Bill Sikowski is here. Assembly Woman Jane Corwin is here.

Have I missed anyone? COLLINS: Dennis.

PATERSON: And Assemblyman Dennis Gaversac (ph), who I've been standing next to all day. He's supervisor, Scott Valuscki (ph), of the town of Clarence, is also here with us this morning.

This is a tragic day in the history of New York. We have lost 49 people in flight 3407's terrible crash late last night. This is a difficult hour for the families, but I must say that the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI all have responded so admirably.

Right here in New York State, I'd like to thank the State Emergency Management Office, the New York State Police, the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Office of Fire Prevention and Control; right here in Buffalo, Mayor Byron Brown's crash and rescue team, other towns and villages have sent assistance. The New York State Police is still guarding the perimeter of the crash scene and the federal officials are trying to securitize the crash scene.

This is a very difficult situation, but the compassion, the professionalism and the coordination among state, federal and local agencies has been outstanding. And I want the citizens of New York to know, and citizens who are watching around the country, that were it ever your misfortune to encounter this kind of tragedy, you would get the greatest service, as we just went to visit the families, and we saw such an outpouring of support from the clergy, from the police, from counselors, from local hospitals, and from even private citizens who have come just to lend their hand. There is a silver lining around a very dark tragedy. It's a tremendous human effort and human caring that we have all witnessed here today.

We are aware of the great loss of life. It's very hard to speak to those family members. I saw a woman whose fiance was killed in the plane crash. She has three little daughters. There was a woman who was a native of China who's been living in Buffalo for many years, a researcher, is actually a doctor. She doesn't have any other family members here. Congressman Lee is going to try to speed up the opportunity for some family members to come and visit her. She lost her husband in the tragedy.

We've all heard of Ms. Eckert. I went to the volunteers of September 11th event last September 11th. She was lost. Now she and her husband, Sean, have been lost in different types of tragedies. One in an attack on our country.

I saw the family of Allison de Barge, a noted writer and lecturer, a foremost expert on Rwanda. A great human being and human services coordinator who was lost in the plane crash as well. A state trooper lost his cousin. We're all connected and we find out how connected we are on days like this. We try to love our neighbors as we would love ourselves, but today we love our neighbors because we realize that they are ourselves.

The last time I was at this kind of a gathering, it was a much different event. It was at the miracle on 34th -- miracle on the Hudson where the plane was able to land safely.

And you come here today and with all the gloom and all the peril that we feel on behalf of the families, we recognize that somewhere in the wake of this, it's hard to make sense of it today, but God hasn't left us. Two of three people that were in the home that the plane landed on miraculously escaped. A couple of people missed the flight. It saved their lives. So we just take what little we can and move forward and devote our energies and our efforts to those who are far less fortunate than us today, those who lost family members, and to try to give them the peace and the safety that they would need at this time.

Thank you.

COLLINS: Thank you, Governor.

I think the governor spoke for all of us in recognizing the efforts of our community.

And I think we need to say no more, Governor. You were very eloquent.

At this point, to help answer some questions, I'd like to introduce the FBI special agent in charge, Laurie Bennett, who would have some comments to make.

Laurie, if you'd like to let them know the status.

LAURIE BENNETT, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE, FBI: Sure. Good afternoon, everyone. Again, thank you, Governor Paterson, for your presence here. It means a lot to the men and women in law enforcement that have been working, as well as the emergency systems to see your dedication to come here.

My heart goes out to all the family victims or any of you who may have known the individuals who live in the wonderful community we live in every day.

We're working hard with NTSB and making some progress. I can't be very specific about what that is because we're still working a little bit with the heat conditions there. Certainly, we have set up a telephone number where individuals from the community have called in and given us some information. We feel very confident in working with NTSB that there will be some answers to some of your questions coming shortly.

We do have our agents from the Evidence Response Team out with the NTSB at this point and trying to assist in any manner that they can.

COLLINS: Thank you, Laurie.

Before I introduce Dr. Billittier, I'd like to acknowledge our great commissioner of emergency services, Greg Skbitski, who literally was fighting a fire as a volunteer fireman when this call came in. It shows his dedication, he was on site almost instantly and has spent the entire night actually coordinating the efforts amongst many of our emergency services personnel and the firefights on the scene that had been and have been fighting this fire all night long.

So I want a special thanks to Greg Skbitski (ph). And with that I'd like to introduce our commissioner of health, Dr. Anthony Billittier, who is in charge of all aspects of the recovery that we will be entering into. So, Doc, are you -- Doc, if you'd like to let them know where we are.

DR. ANTHONY BILLITTIER, COMMISSIONER OF HEALTH: Thank you, County Executive Collins and good afternoon.

As the county executive said, I'm Dr. Anthony Billittier. I'm the commissioner of health here in Erie County.

Two major functions fall under my responsibility. One is the general public health issues that go along with a scene like this. There's obviously very hazardous conditions. And another very important aspect to the public's health is the mental health of the community, families and the responders. And so we're working very hard to ensure that we do everything we can to take care of people.

Another large responsibility that falls under the Health Department is the Medical Examiner's Office. We are just beginning to move into the scene. As you probably know, the scene has been unsafe for quite some time now. My understanding is that the fires are just about out and we will be moving in to begin the very laborious process...

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to try to do this. We're going to try to get around some of this right now. Important information. But what is critical now is to get the information from the NTSB investigators who are on the scene now. Thirteen, 14 members of the go team, to get an update on what they have been able to ascertain about the crash from the location.

So bear with us here as we try to get you right to the most important and latest information. Let me bring in John Wiley again, our aviation expert and pilot as well.

John, thanks for your time again and thanks for your patience with us.

I'm just wondering, we were talking to Drew oh maybe a couple of hours ago and one of the things that we had him check out is the aircraft. This particular Q400.

JOHN WILEY, "BUSINESS & COMMERCIAL AVIATION" MAGAZINE: Q400.

HARRIS: Q400 aircraft. And we were just having a conversation about it just a couple of moments ago. And you're telling me it is a very good aircraft.

WILEY: The Q400, this is the fourth iteration of the airplane. The airplane was originally introduced as the 100 model. Like everything else, you want to put a little bit bigger engines on it, you want to carry more passengers. The 200 model. Then they came an decided on the 300 model and possibly for marketing the differentiation between the early models, they call this the Q400.

There's some interesting technology in here. A lot of times people will look at the airplane and they'll go, well this has propellers. It must be old (ph) technology. A very, very sophisticated airplane in that they have active noise attenuation in the airplane. They basically have the computers looks at the noise in the airplane, looks at the computer as they broadcast that exact same frequency, 180 degrees out of faze so you can have a white sound. So it's a very sophisticated airplane. And to this point in time, we've only had two other incidents with a Q400. This is the first fatality.

HARRIS: And we were talking earlier about the witnesses who saw the plane coming in. And they were talking about this steep angle, the banking angle on the plane as it was coming down. And you drew up an analogy that was pretty amazing in talking about that pitch angle.

WILEY: Well, we're getting reports from these people that it was at a very, very steep bank. Now when you're sitting back there in the cabin, for your comfort and just the general maneuvering of the airplane, we will not exceed 25 degrees of bank. So if you want to go home and get out your old protractor from your geography -- I mean your geometry class, you can basically look at what 25 degrees of bank is.

We have had incidents in the past...

HARRIS: What does it look like? You can do it. What does it look like?

WILEY: Twenty-five degrees would be a very gentle bank. And, folks, what we don't want to do is, we don't want to put g-forces -- we don't want to put additional loads on you as we're starting to maneuver this airplane. So we'll keep it nice and quiet. You get on the airplane at point a, hour and a half, scenery changes, and get off at point b.

We also -- we're very seldom above about 10 to 12 degrees of pitch, the nose up, and we're very seldom more than about 5 to 7 degrees nose low. We've had reports of other aircraft with excursions, as we like to call them, using the jargon to euphoniums, but there was an excursion a number of years ago where the airplane was in over 68 degrees of bank and was about 40 degrees nose low.

HARRIS: Sixty degrees is what? What is it?

WILEY: At least twice of what we're normal to. But -- so here we are in 60 degrees of bank, 40 degrees nose low. Ugly.

HARRIS: Yes, can you see that. Yes.

How much -- based on everything you've heard today, the reporting from eyewitnesses, what we've been able to peace together from our i- Reporters, the folks on the ground, the great work that Deborah Feyerick has been doing there and talking to witness, people in the neighborhood, how much time do you believe the pilot of this aircraft had to make whatever adjustments to try to avert this crash?

WILEY: Very, very little. Very, very little. You don't go into a situation that you think is fraught with danger. I mean self- survival kicks in. People will be surprised when I say this, but I was always concerned about passenger comfort and the people that were on-board my airplane. But actually the airplane stops at the back of my eyes because I'm looking out the airplane. I'm the first in the air, I'm the last one out of the air. So I'm not trying to be crass about this, but you do have a strong sense of self-preservation in this. And if you have indications that there are problems out there, whether it be ice, whether it be wind shear, especially in our current society, and we have an extremely safe environment here in the United States, you're just not going to go there. You'll take the delay. You're carrying the extra fuel so that you can do the delay. You're just not going to stick your nose into that hornet's nest.

HARRIS: Terrific. Great analysis as always. John, appreciate it. Thank you.

And we're just getting an indication now -- and do we still have the shot from Buffalo that we're going to actually get the NTSB briefing -- Joe, what was that, 3:00 or 3:30? 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. But as you can see, Governor Paterson is on the scene and talking about moments ago the outpouring of support for the families of the victims of this horrible disaster.

Let's take a quick break. A couple of other stories we want to bring to you before 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time an Kyra Phillips. You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Shock, disbelief and heartbreak for the relatives of the people on Flight 3407. Our affiliate WIBB talked with one man whose sister was on the flight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS KAUSNER, SISTER ON PLANE: My parents are on vacation in Florida and I had to call down there and tell my father what was going on. And I'm just thinking about my mom.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: How are they taking it?

KAUSNER: To tell you the truth, I heard my mother make a noise on my phone that I never heard before. My other sister, Laura, was waiting at the airport. I heard on the radio that there had been a crash, so I called immediately to see if the plane had landed at the airport or not. And initially she thought that it had, but it turns out that that is not the case. Right now I'm thinking the worst and I'm thinking about the fact that my mother has to fly home from Florida and what I'm going to tell my two sons. That's what I'm thinking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARRIS: Boy.

President Barack Obama says his thoughts and prayers are with the victims of the plane crash near Buffalo. His attention is also focused on the economy and the stimulus bill today. In remarks to business leaders a short time ago, the president said the goal at the heart of the plan is to create jobs.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Because we have once in a generation chance to act boldly and turn adversity into opportunity and to use this crisis as a chance to transform our economy for the 21st century. That's the driving purpose of the recovery and re-investment plan that I've put before Congress. It's a plan that will ignite spending by businesses and consumers, make the investments necessary for lasting economic growth and prosperity and save or create more than 3.5 million jobs over the next two years. Ninety percent of those jobs are in the private sector.

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HARRIS: The House could begin voting on the massive economic stimulus plan next hour. A Senate vote is expected later this evening. And the price tag on the bill has come down a bit. Still pretty huge. Congressional correspondent Brianna Keilar is following developments on Capitol Hill.

Brianna, if you would, bring us up to date.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is still huge, $787 billion. Slightly adjusted because of the Congressional Budget Office putting out a new estimate. But we are expecting members of the House to start voting here in the next hour or so. I am just steps now from the House floor where debate has been going on.

Some House Democrats, who were upset about some of the education spending, specifically new school construction money that was pulled out of this bill, they said they wanted a chance to read this bill, to go over it and that is why we're seeing a vote today in the House instead of yesterday. This final bill, the language of it, didn't come out until late last night, even though a deal was reached on Wednesday.

Meantime, we've been seeing some back and forth between Democrats who support the bill and Republicans who don't support the bill, also centered around how little time there is between this final language coming out and the vote. Only about 12 hours, 14 hours time lapse between those two.

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REP. TOM PRICE, (R) GEORGIA: You really can't be serious. You can't be serious. This would be humerus if it wasn't so sad. Got this at 11:00 last night. Over 1,000 pages. What's in it? Have you read it? We found $30 million for mice. Got $30 million for mice. You can't be serious. What a joke. $30 million for mice. Does that create jobs?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is no joke. To my friend on the other side of this aisle, this is a very serious matter. We're losing 3,673,000 jobs in the last year alone. Mr. Speaker, that is 10,000 jobs every day. Now what we have here is plain and simple. Our economy has leaks and holes in it all throughout. That's why you've got 1,000 pages there, because it's big. Our economy is big.

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KEILAR: And, I'm sorry, that actually wasn't the sound bite that I was hoping to show you. But let me just explain it so that you understand what's going on there. $30 million for mice. You heard Congressman Tom Price from Georgia say, a Republican. What he's talking about is $30 million in this stimulus package going to the California Coastal Conservancy. This is not necessarily specifically for mice. And what he's talking about is that this is a group that restores wetlands. One of their priorities has been to restore wetlands and help an endangered rodent in San Francisco's bay area. So that's one of the complaints. Republicans still talking about some of what they call pork in this bill.

Meantime, though, on the Senate side, we're understanding that Senator Ted Kennedy, who supplied Democrats with their 61st vote, that one extra vote because they have to get to 60 votes, he's not going to be here today for the vote in the Senate and that means it's going to be a bit of a squeaker. We see Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid trying to win over some more Senate Republicans, in addition to those three who were on board. But, Tony, it's a tall order.

HARRIS: Yes, it sounds like it. All right. Our congressional correspondent, Brianna Keilar, for us.

Brianna, thank you.

And we're just learning here at CNN that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been released from a New York hospital eight days after undergoing surgery for pancreatic cancer. Sources close to Ginsburg say she continues to do well after the procedure and that doctors and family remain cautiously optimistic. Justice Ginsburg is, as you know, 75 years old. But the good news that we are reporting right now is that Justice Ginsburg has been released from a New York hospital. This according to a Supreme Court statement released just a short time ago.

What would cause a plane to simply drop out of the sky? Did ice on the wings play a role?

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HARRIS: And here is what we know right now about the crash of Continental Flight 3407. The plane's flight data recorders have been found in the wreckage and will be analyzed soon. CNN i-Reporters saw the turboprop dive into a house near Buffalo, exploding into a fireball. These pictures from i-Reporter Will Charland (ph). From Google you can see the house and neighborhood as it looked before the crash. One person inside was killed. Amazingly, two others survived. The Continental plane was a turboprop on approach to Buffalo's airport from Newark. Witnesses say the plane's engine seemed unusually loud and suddenly quit. Second later, the fiery impact.

And the weather not unusually harsh. Pretty routine actually for Buffalo in February. Light rain and snow mixed and throw in some freezing rain as well. Early speculation focuses on possible ice buildup on the plane's wings. Some of tower communications now. Here air traffic controllers check conditions with other pilots in the area.

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AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Are you getting any kind of icing or anything there?

DELTA 1992: It doesn't appear to be building. We've got about a half inch -- about a quarter inch on us from the desend that has remained with us the whole time.

CACTUS 1452: Set the road for Cactus 1452, and we've been picking up on ice here for oh the last 10 minutes.

52, sir, we've been getting ice since 20 miles south of the airport.

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL: Cactus 1452, OK, if you could, let me know when you get out of the ice. Aircraft coming up from the south was reporting that earlier.

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HARRIS: Let's get you to Chad Myers now.

And, Chad, I understand you're at the magic wall. There you are. If you would, talk to us about icing. One of the things that's been -- we've been trying to sort out here is that you can have icing at one altitude and no icing at even at a lower altitude. But help us understand all of that.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: For most of their flight, they were not in icing conditions. They were above 16,000 feet. That's about the threshold where icing was. But then when they got down into the 7,000 to 5,000 foot range, that's where the icing really became quite severe. And it was just in that glide slope as they came down from their normal straight and level flight, they came down into -- when they were trying to make their final turn into the airport here -- they flew through the layer of ice. The airplane was very cold and the ice clearly accumulated on the airplane.

I don't think there's any question that there was icing out there. I haven't heard anybody say, no, this can't be icing because I'm pretty sure, yes, ice had something -- something -- to do with it.

Here's the airport right here. The Buffalo Airport. I used to live right there down on Suzette (ph) Drive. Here's the plane coming in. It was trying to make -- on here coming down from 23. As we take you back up here, draw a straight line. This was on -- ready to go on final. This was ready to come down as it was right to the airport. Instead, it came down here in Clarence Center. Right here on Long Street, in fact.

And from one of the witnesses, I was able to listen to this coverage all day, Tony, from morning until now. A witness -- I think we're going to have a couple -- we're going to have an ear witness that says this thing sounded like a lawn mower chain saw, wrong sound for a plane. That says something might have been wrong with the pitch of the props or the props could have been iced as well. Also another eyewitness said -- and he's from the street -- that the plane came in this way. It actually hit the house from the wrong direction like he was flying away from the airport. That could happen as the plane tilts, you have a wing down and you have nose down and that whole plane actually came down and tilted around as it was trying to fly this way, the plane came in and landed this way.

All right. We had this picture on before. Here's the picture right here of the Google Earth. The Google maps. It takes you right on down to the street. You may be able to do this from your home as well to either see this or maybe even see your home if you like. A beautiful little neighborhood. All manicured lawns. Beautiful homes here at Clarence Center. Houses in this neighborhood, you know, worth $200,000. Beautiful little structure here. And this is the back side of this home is where this plane came in from.

And the irony is, they're saying here that both of the homes alongside, both homes, Tony, were not damaged. That's plane literally came in from this direction and moved right here into this home. A fatal crash. Just a terrible situation that they had here later on in the night. And it was dark. You know, they probably couldn't see the icing if they had them on. These boots were -- are going to be working. We'll talk about how these boots work on this particular aircraft trying to keep the ice off the plane because this should not have been an overwhelming situation. This plane should have been able to take that.

HARRIS: All right. Pretty good at stuff there, Chad. Thanks.

MYERS: You're welcome.

HARRIS: Buffalo area residents describe a deadly crash in their neighborhood.

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HARRIS: You know, CNN i-Reporters Will Charland (ph) provided the most -- I mean look at the video. It's right there on your screen. The immediate aftermath of the crash of Flight -- Continental Flight 3407. Let's have a quick listen.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God, the flames (ph)!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my God.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get some -- get some help for my daughter! She's hysterical!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my gosh! Is there anybody in there?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE) my husband!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Get some help in there! (EXPLETIVE DELETED). Somebody help me!

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HARRIS: More of our continuing coverage of this horrible disaster. CNN NEWSROOM continues in just a moment with Kyra Phillips.

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